Travel the Lewis and Clark Trail in New TownNearly 200 years ago

Sakakawea Country is appropriately named. She truly did live here, in an earthlodge on the banks of the Knife River just north of Stanton. From this point, her life intertwined for two years with Lewis and Clark.
Sakakawea, the spelling adopted by the state of North Dakota, is Hidatsa for Bird Woman.
Though she lived north of Stanton, at what is now the Knife River Indian Villages National historic Site, Sakakawea was a Shoshone Indian. She was taken captive by a Hidatsa war party that attacked the Shoshone at Three Forks, Mont., where they had ventured out on a buffalo hunt. It’s estimated she was 12 when she was captured in 1800 and taken to the Hidatsa village. There, she was purchased by Frenchman Toussaint Charbonneau, a trader with ties to the Northwest Company. Later, he took her as his wife.While she didn’t guide the Corps of Discovery throughout their journey, she did identify landmarks that led them through the Missouri headwater country and the Bozeman Pass on the return journey. She helped secure Shoshone horses for the Corps, which needed them for what was assumed would be an easy mountain portage to the Pacific.Her most important contribution was that of interpreter, or as Clark put it, "interpretress with the Snake Indians."
Historian James P. Ronda writes: "She often worked as part of a long and cumbersome translation chain that took each native word through many speakers before reaching the captains. Sakakawea was able to continue those duties west of the Continental Divide because of the presence of Shoshone prisoners among groups that did not speak Shoshone."

As you cross the Missouri River on the historic Four Bears Bridge, you will see Reunion Bay where the Captains were reunited on Aug. 12, 1806, and where young John Colter met the Illinois fur trappers. He turned back to the Yellowstone and the Mountains with Hancock and Dickson and began his trek into American history as one of country's first mountain men. He would later be the first white man to see the wonder's of what is now Yellowstone Park.

For more information about the Lewis and Clark journey, contact the City of New Town, the Tribal Business Council, or the Three Tribes Museum.